Sugar is Hidden

The sugar tax on drinks comes in today – but it is a given that sweet drinks have a lot of added sugar.  Ditto cakes, biscuits, chocolate and other ‘treats’

So what about those hidden sugars?

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Pea snacks #glutenfree #lowcal

When (for allergy reasons) I went wheat free it was not long before I noticed how wheat-heavy all of our food is when it comes to grabbing a snack on the go.

Added to which, so many wheat free foods (and for the purposes of buying snacks that usually means gluten free) are invariably higher in sugar and fat than other snacks – and thus higher calories.

Aldis have these pea snacks, which are 90 cals per pack and also high in protien so well worth looking at. They come in sweet chilli, sour cream and chives, Malay curry and salt and vinegar flavours.

Verdict: If I am honest they do have a slightly odd after taste and like many GF foods have a tendency to stick around your teeth (sorry if that sounds gross but those of us who are stuck with GF will know how often this is the case with ready-made GF foods).

These snacks are not bad despite that.  They are made from peas and not potatoes after all. And  more importantly – not wheat!

Miss Dilly & Co : British Blue

I may have mentioned before that Miss Dilly is obsessed with Hooman-food.

The sound of the fridge door opening will bring her running every time, because we may possibly be making food of some kind that involves chicken or ham or beef or most especially her favourite Hooman-food of all… cheese!

Gluten Free Bread Mix

I tried the  Hale & Hearty Organic Light Bread Mix with Golden Linseed yesterday.

Oh dear.

Perhaps other people have fared better with this product but for me it had no redeeming features.

Firstly – the linseed may be golden but the bread was not. Like many GF products the top remained a pasty grey-white. Though when I did manage to prise it out of the high quality non-stick bread pan – with  a lot of effort and a knife (ruining the pan in the process) and the sides and base where a yellow-brown.

The smell was not good. As a farm girl I can say that it reminded of ancient hessian grain sacks – rather dank and musty.

The bread itself was softish when first cooked and when just cooled was almost bread like but quickly hardened into a texture that managed to be both rubbery and crumbly at the same time.

On the following day I thought it might toast. It did not so much as singe in the toaster – just dried out to a damp brick state and the toaster itself had begun to smoke.

I did try to eat it but the smell of damp sacking, which by now also had also taken in a distinct whiff of putty – was off putting.

The entire batch was resigned to the bird table where it has been not just ignored  but actively avoided by the local Jackdaws who will normally try just about anything.

Maybe I was unlucky and had a bad batch but I won’t be trying this product again.

The World of Bunch: part one

Whilst writing Winter Downs and the world of my heroine, Rose ‘Bunch’ Courtney, there were many things that required some careful research. The first that came to mind was the knotty problem of rationing. Conducting a small straw poll the general perception of  many people seems to be that rationing came in with a bang the moment war was declared, and remained there until the end of the war, when it was lifted immediately. This was not the case.

Mindful of the privations suffered in the Great War, the Ministry of Food was set up to oversee supplies and there was an original plan to implement full rationing from September 1939. The MoF did announce rationing several times in those early months – only to postpone them due to some vociferous newspaper campaigns, spearheaded, by all accounts by a series of editorials in the Daily Express; which, for example, urged the public to “…revolt against the food rationing system.”  

GF Chocolate Cookies #GF #productreview #wheatfree

I was given a pack of  Lovemore O’Choco biscuits recently.

The best way to describe them would be a form of GF Oreo cookie.  and not being a fan of Oreos the fact that they where not dissimilar is not really a good thing for me personally, though I know Oreos are very popular with some people.

I found this product acceptable if there where nothing else to snack on but not something I would actively seek out as a treat.

Downside:  The biscuits are rather crumbly/brittle and suffer from  the gritty rice flour texture that so many GF baked goods have. Rather bland flavour that is very sweet and lacks a cocoa kick that the dark colouring seemed to promise.

4/10

 

All product reviews are made on genuine purchases.

BFree Pittas and Wraps

Having only recently mentioned the demise of the Tesco Free From Pitta Breads I came across BFree Breads.

These are quite palatable. They have a good flavour and are not ‘rice flour gritty’.   Makes a reasonable sandwich and has sufficient structural integrity to take a moist filling without getting soggy too quickly.  8/10

Downside: a little on the thin side so that when opening them up as a pocket it is very easy to inadvertently cut through the sides.

They are in many ways very similar in flavour and texture to the BFree Wraps. I am not sure how good that is. I did find the wraps a little rubbery but better than some make of rice-based wraps which have a tendency to crumble. 8/10